Annyong haseyo!

Our first week in Korea has been nothing less than a blur. We had a great flight over - the girls did really well on both the flights, layover, and bus ride to Songtan. After getting started at 6 am on a Monday morning, we finally got settled into our hotel around 9:30 pm local Tuesday night. We are 13 hours ahead of EST, which put us on the road for 27+ hours.

We were up at the crack of dawn the next morning and walked around the marketplace. I think I'm going to like all that shopping in a small area of town: beautiful blankets, tailors, and handbag/purse shops galore! The girls are getting a lot of attention, as children are seen as a lucky charm of sorts. And Holly's blond hair is really stunning to them.

Little by little we are learning the Korean language. We are mastering one word at a time to proficiency, tackling the polite conversational words first. Kamsa hamnida is thank you; annyong haseyo is the informal Korean greeting and equivalent of hey, what's up, how's it going. The family center offers Korean language classes weekly that we'll start attending soon.

All in all we are getting settled in nicely - we've found an apartment, gotten cell phones, found the Starbucks on base, and Holly enrolled in school. Yes, Starbucks is a very important commodity with the jet lag we have.

Until the next edition.......